Director: Ingmar Bergman
Rating: NR
Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957) continues to be one of the most timeless films that haunts and provokes without warning. On the surface, the film appears too artificial, too inflated and too overdone. The characters are immediately mistaken for being caricatures rather than real people with whom we cannot find a connection. In this period piece that takes place during the Medieval Period, we are immediately introduced to a knight, Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) who makes it ashore after returning from the long arduous Christian Crusades and then stumbles upon Death (Bengt Ekerot) in “fleshified” form. Overtly allegorical and often clichéd in a literary sense, the characters look as if they were ripped from The Canterbury Tales (more specifically, “The Pardoner’s Tale”). However, death is not under the guise of an old man—as in The Canterbury Tales. Bergman’s Death is the real deal—cloaked in black, pale in pallor, and cunningly sinister. Bergman, unlike the Pardoner, in The Canterbury Tales does not guide us into a parable about greed. Instead, Bergman takes us on the reversal of a hero’s journey where there is no promise of the traditional and celebratory apotheosis but rather a deep brooding search for faith, the divine, the soul in the midst of a troubled world overtaken by the bubonic plague, bawdiness, hypocrisy, and corrupt religious zealotry. Therefore, what belies the literal simplicity of this film is an unexpected emotional realism that takes us into the highs and lows of exploring the meaning of faith and its impact on the fate of one’s soul—which we follow through the knight’s “anti-heroic” tale.
After returning from the Crusades, Antonius has seen it all: death, hypocrisy, and depravity—all in the name of God. Unlike the nihilistic squire (Gunnar Björnstrand) who believes that there is no hope in the world and no divine can save man, Antonius is not ready to accept this fatalism. Therefore, it is timely that Death decides to capitalize on Antonius’ doubts by challenging him to a game of chess with high stakes. If Death wins, he takes Antonius’ life (and of course, his soul). If Antonius wins, he gains knowledge about God, the Devil, and the meaning of man’s existence.
Antonius and Death meet periodically while Antonius makes his way en route to his home where his wife awaits him after years of participating in the Crusades. This antiquest (a reversal of Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey”) becomes both geographical and spiritual. As he meets people, the answers become clearer to him. He sees the persecution of the so-called witch who has supposedly consorted with the Devil. Prior to being burned at the stake, he asks her “have you seen him (the Devil)?” She responds “you can see him anytime . . . look into my eyes.” She also tells him that he may be behind him. This becomes the most revealing moment in the film because it is apparent that the Devil is within us. Thus, God and the Devil are not tangible beings. They do not take on the form of a shining, bright light or a man with horns and a pitchfork. We are the embodiment of good and evil. This goes along the lines of existential playwright Jean Paul Sartre who states “hell is other people.” Therefore, the terror Antonius sees in the young woman’s eyes is the terror of humanity, that is, what we are capable of doing to others—whether it is inflicting pain, passing judgment, cavorting, stealing, lying, or committing adultery. Every commandment is broken. Through this, shame is inflicted upon shame, objectification upon objectification, hypocrisy upon hypocrisy. Antonius clearly sees this in the plight of the young woman who is about to be burned and tortured. What right does her persecutor have to punish her? It is only Antonius who tries to provide her comfort prior to her death. And, therefore, when it comes to God and the Devil, it is contingent upon free will: man can create the Devil within himself; man can create God within himself. Antonius creates his God.
The plague also serves as a powerful metaphor for the cycle of evil. This is reiterated in the case of the squire who witnesses a doubling of a crime when a man commits murder to steal from his victim. When he is caught by a mute woman, it becomes an opportune moment for rape. However, his efforts are thwarted by the squire. The squire recognizes the murderer as the theologian who has convinced him to participate in the Crusades. The hypocrisy disgusts him. As a result, he promises to brand him the next time he meets him again.
What makes Antonius an unforgettable character is his perseverance to find answers. Death asks him: “Don’t you ever stop asking questions?” Unlike the squire who has resigned himself to fatalism and nihilism, Antonius is able to be perceptive when he actually sees goodness. This occurs when he befriends the traveling actors, Mia and Jof. When he is given a bowl of milk, a symbolic act of human kindness, he has found answers. While staring at a bowl of strawberries, he states “I’ll carry this memory between my hands as if it were bowled filled to the brim with fresh milk. . . And it will be an adequate sign—it will be enough for me.”
Therefore, Bergman does not stop at fatalism. Death—much like God (good) and the Devil (evil)—is at the mercy of man’s volition (i.e., free will). If one wishes death upon himself, it will come. This is illustrated when an actor feigns death after being confronting by the husband of the wife with whom the actor has had a tryst. When the actor takes refuge in a tree, Death arrives to chop it down, causing the actor to fall to his death.
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Resigning oneself to death also operates in the same manner. Again, it is up to man to decide on the fate of his soul and his existence. With the exception of Antonius, the rest of his traveling companions, Antonius’ wife, the squire, the mute woman, the blacksmith and his wife willingly allow themselves to be taken by Death since there is nothing else left for them. The blacksmith got his wife back only to continue on in a marriage that is futile, Antonius’ wife reunites with him but with Death trailing his path, the mute woman speaks for the first time and says “it (perhaps life) is finished,” and the squire, as always, accepts fatalism since there is no God to hear their cries or laments. Antonius’ anticlimactic apotheosis ends in sacrifice. He is able to spare the lives of Mia, Jof, and their baby by knocking the chess pieces off the board to distract Death from claiming their lives as well. When Death puts the pieces back on the chess board, Death is able to win on the next move. Therefore, Antonius’ end is bittersweet. He gains knowledge, spare the lives of Mia, Jof, and their child, but loses his own life in the process.
If the responsibility of good and evil falls on the shoulders of humanity and not God, then is God’s silence justified? Is the silence cruel? Indifferent? Bergman never closes the circle on this as it is constantly brought up in his films such as Fanny and Alexander, The Silence, and Through the Glass Darkly.
Released in 1957, The Seventh Seal is timeless in its existential themes. Bergman is perhaps the leading pioneer who has intellectualized spirituality. Other directors such as Terrence Malick’s Thin Red Line, has also followed suit where war, again, causes man to grapple with God’s existence and man’s purpose in life.
The Seventh Seal is truly the lament of the 21st century in spite of the fact the story is deceptively simple. Its greatest power is its exploration of humanity—our faults, follies, narcissism—more specifically, our tendency to deflect blame or responsibility on others, on an entity, on an external force. In addition, our plague is driven by the perversion of technology as opposed to the perversion of spiritual beliefs. We deal with feelings of futility, alienation, loneliness in an impersonal world where technology takes the place of human interaction. This disconnectedness leaves us hollow and often narcissistic. We think we already have answers; when in reality, we still need to take that anti-heroic journey.
Just recently, as my Film Criticism and Theory course comes to an end, my students ask me what is my favorite film we have studied throughout the year. I tell them it’s The Seventh Seal. Some groaned. But after providing them an explanation, their mouths remain agape and there is a silence.
–written for Film Criticism and Theory students
June 7, 2016